English Entertainment
Hallmark comes up with a new look and feel
MUMBAI: It has been a period of transition for Hallmark. The international division was sold to a group of investors by Crown Media last year for $242 million.
Now the channel has gone in for a new look and programming line-up. The new look signifies the broadcaster’s commitment to offering high quality movies, mini-series and drama series in an attractive and engaging channel environment that is relevant to Asian audiences.
Sparrowhawk Media Group (which operates Hallmark) MD Asia Pacific Andrew Hanna said, “Hallmark Channel’s new look is designed to present our programming in the most contemporary and compelling way to our audiences. We will continue to provide our audiences with the same quality production values and premium entertainment shows they have come to know and love. Now, Hallmark Channel will do it better.”
Hallmark’s Asia Pacific creative director Cameron Craig said, “So often we see that everyday events in life are a wellspring for dramatic storytelling. Hallmark Channel offers people great drama entertainment that draws upon the full range of human emotion. Creatively, we have set out to reflect that great stories often exist in the drama that surrounds us in each person’s life, everyday.
The new on-air look features landscapes and captures scenes that aim to reflect the daily drama of people’s lives. These images were filmed in India, Malaysia and Thailand. Superimposed over these images are close-ups of what are typical Hallmark viewers reacting to the drama inherent in the scenes. The addition of the line ‘in every life, there is drama’ reflects, in a subtle but engaging way, the emotional connection audiences feel for the Hallmark Channel brand and its drama based programming.”
As far as the programming template is concerned Hallmark will continue to offer mini-series based on world famous novels, classic tales of mythology, great people in history and inspiring true stories. In 2006, the mini-series that will air include an adaptation of Jules Verne novel Mysterious Island which deals with a group of prisoners who have escaped from a Confederate prisoner of war camp during the American Civil War by a hot air balloon, William Golding’s tale To the Ends of the Earth which is about a young man’s coming of age at sea, action adventure Supernova and the classic Greek tale of Hercules.
On weekdays, Hallmark will air movies and drama series, including courtroom drama’s Judging Amy and Family Law, spy thriller Spooks, murder mystery’s Midsomer Murder’s and Wire in the Blood and contemporary drama’s Doc Martin and Hustle.
Hanna adds, “Our new look and branding is part of our constant mission aimed to entertain the drama-watching and drama-loving audiences everywhere.”
English Entertainment
Ellison takes his Paramount-Warner Bros case straight to theater owners
The Skydance chief goes to CinemaCon with promises and a skeptical crowd waiting
CALIFORNIA: David Ellison strode into a room packed with thousands of cinema owners and executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday and did something rather bold: he looked them in the eye and asked them to trust him.
The chief executive of Paramount Skydance vowed that his company would release a minimum of 30 films a year if regulators greenlight its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has made theater owners deeply, and loudly, nervous.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison told the crowd. “Once we combine with Warner Bros, we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually across both studios.”
It was a confident pitch. Whether it landed is another matter. Cinema operators have already called on regulators to block the deal, and scepticism in the room was hardly concealed.
Ellison pushed back by pointing to recent form. Paramount, born from the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media last August, plans to release 15 films this year, nearly double the eight it put out in 2025. Progress, he argued, was already underway.
He also threw theater owners a bone they have long been chasing: all films, he pledged, would run exclusively in cinemas for a minimum of 45 days, drawing applause from a crowd that has spent years fighting for exactly that commitment across the industry.
“People can speculate all they want,” Ellison said, “but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment. And we’ll show you we mean it.”
Fine words. The regulators, however, will have the last one.
